In case you missed our announcement a few weeks ago, Baby Mason is a girl!!!  We are so excited to be girl parents.  We kept our gender reveal party super small because we had a set budget in mind, but I wanted to share more about it because there are so many people we wanted to invite!

Weston and I had never planned a party together until our baby’s gender reveal.  Even though each of our parents desperately wanted to help, we were adamant that we plan this party ourselves.  We’re parents now and we wanted to do this for our baby.  We did finally concede and asked our parents to each bring a side dish for dinner.

I have been to my fair share of gender reveal parties and I’ve seen a lot of ideas on Pinterest and Instagram.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do for our reveal – tons of confetti!  We also knew some of the things we didn’t want such as a huge table full of blue and pink candy.  They look great in photos and it’s super cute, but most of it is wasted because people don’t eat it.  You know we can’t bear the thought of wasting food or money!

One of mine and Weston’s favorite things to do is drink coffee together.  We always love trying different coffee flavors when we travel and we love just talking while we drink coffee.  It only felt natural to have a coffee and donut-themed gender reveal party.  We had donuts and coffee with a choice of three different creamers.  We also had coffee cup and donut-shaped cookies that had different coffee/baby-related puns on the coffee cups!  The finishing touch for our theme was the centerpieces.  I had the idea to use coffee mugs instead of vases and I may have been way too excited about it.  Partially because it turned out really cute and partially because it only cost $2.25 for each centerpiece for both the mug and flowers! #budgetingwin

We intentionally scheduled the party for later in the afternoon because it’s summer and because I wanted the best light for pictures (#photographerprobs).  Since it was a later party, we wanted to provide dinner for our guests.  Especially since half of them drove 3 hours or more one way to get there.  Our menu consisted of chicken swirls, hashbrown casserole, fruit salad, regular salad, and mini peanut butter pies.  Some of our favorites!

I always strive for consistency, so when we used a balloon to announce our pregnancy, I knew we had to use balloons for all future baby-related announcements.  We ordered both girl and boy balloons since we still didn’t know the baby’s gender.  We also had large balloons that spelled out, “Oh Baby,” to match our letter-shaped donuts.

Weston and I struggled with what to wear to the party because our first thought was, “what if the baby sees this years from now and we wore the wrong color?”  The more we thought about it, we realized that our outfit choice should not be determined by what we want the baby to be, but by what we think it is.  We asked our guests to wear blue or pink to show us what they think the gender is, so we should do the same.  We both thought the baby was a boy and decided we would both wear blue.  I also wanted our outfits to match our letter balloons, so we each had pink outfits on standby just in case.

Now for the part you actually wanted to read about – the confetti reveal.  Weston and I thought our baby was a boy for the last few months.  I wasn’t terribly sick and I have been pretty happy.  All the old wives tales pointed to boy.  When it came time for the reveal, we got everyone into position and Weston counted, “one, two, three!” Cannons started popping and people started cheering!  Except I couldn’t get my cannon to pop.  In a matter of seconds, I had 4 different thoughts.

“Crap, my cannon isn’t popping!”

“Everyone is cheering. Hurry up, cannon!”

“Wait, is that pink confetti??”

“What?? We’re having a girl??”

I couldn’t bring myself to share the photos of my facial expressions during all these thoughts because it looks like I’m angry about the gender, but really I just couldn’t get my cannon to pop haha.

Weston and I were both completely shocked and it took a while for it to sink in that we were having a girl.  I was terrified to have a girl.  I have three brothers and generally get along better with males.  We knew how to handle a boy.  A girl would be completely different (and way more expensive), but we are excited to welcome a sweet little girl into our lives in just 3 more months!

In the days following our party, we were still trying to wrap our minds around the fact that we’re having a girl.  Weston wore pink shirts 4 days in a row, which was super adorable.  He is so excited to be a girl dad and is already talking about how cute she will look in bows and dresses.  The way he talks to her and about her is so sweet and I cannot wait to see her in his arms!

Thank you to all of our family and friends that came to our gender reveal party!  I also want to thank Deborah Michelle Photography for capturing so many wonderful photos and Aly Hughes Photography for creating a film that makes me cry every time I watch it.  I am so blessed to have both of you in my life and I’m glad you were the ones to preserve this moment for us!

The Creative Team:

Photographer | Deborah Michelle Photography

Videographer | Aly Hughes Photography

Donuts | Daylight Donuts

Cookies | Summer Brown

Mini Peanut Butter Pies | Sugar & Spice Bakery